My trade union membership party card number the (scorching) summer spent behind bars ostracizations (endured) in kabul and damascas the stinking stony cell of royal fort
late evening a few kisses stolen on the campus bridge
for a small job opportunity all the merits of a long life I must hide in my CV
پنجابی ادب وچ پدر شاہی کلچر ٹولدا ایہہ مضمون عورت مارچ لاہور 2021 وچ حصہ پاندیاں زنانیاں دی نذر اے ۔
فوزیہ رفیق
بابا
بڈھا – وڈا- وڈیرا
پیو- دادا- وڈیری عمر دا سکا
فقیر- سوالی- غریب
بزرگ- صوفی- کلاسیکی شاعر
یورپی آرٹ دی اِک لہر سی ’دادا ازم‘ پنجابی لٹریچر وچ اک ہڑ اے بابا ازم ۔ناواں توں لگدا اے بابا تے د ادا جیویں اِکو کجھ ہونے نیں، اصل
چ’دادے‘ تے ’بابے‘ وچ زمین اسمان دا فرق اے۔
’دادا‘ روايت بھنن دا ناں اے تے ’بابا ‘ روايت دی غلامی۔ روايت کیہڑی اے؟ بابے دی اپنی۔
جد کوئی لکھاری اپنیاں لکھتاں وچ پِدرشاہی قدراں دی ہلا شیری تے اوہناں دا پرچار کردا اے تے میرے خیال وچ اوہ ’بابا ازم‘ اے۔
سانوں پتا اے، ساڈی وسوں پِدر شاہی کلچر وچ ڈُبی ہوئی اے تےفیر پنجابی ادب تے وی ایہدا اثر ہونا اے، فیر وی میں گھٹ ای سُنیا اے ایس بارے پنجابی لکھاریاں کوئی گل بات کیتی ہووے۔ اسیں روز دیہاڑے پنجابی کلاسیکی شاعراں نوں پڑھن تے سمجھن دا چارہ کرنے آں، اوہ و ی ضروری اے ، پر کدی ایہہ وی ویکھیا جاوے بئی اج دیاں لکھتاں وچ اج دیاں سمسیاواں دی کیہ صورتحال اے۔
سچ تے ایہہ اے کہ ملامتی صوفی شاعراں توں اڈ،پنجابی ادب وچ بابا ازم تھاں تھاں ملدا اے۔ایہہ بابا اک ’فیوڈل لارڈ‘ اے جیہڑا پیری فقیری دے بھیس وچ رہندا اے؛ زنانیاں نوں آپ توں گھٹ سمجھدا اے، کمزور کر دا اے، ورت کے اگے ودھدا اے تے اندروں اوہناں توں ڈردا اے۔ اُتوں دبا کے رکھدا اے۔پنجابی ادب دا ایہہ ’فیوڈل لارڈ‘ اُکا زنانیاں نال تعصب نہیں رکھدا-
غریباں ، مزدوراں تے کارندیاں نوں وی ہینا سمجھدا اے ۔ مذہبی تے جنسی اقلیتاں نوں وی۔ کہنا ایہہ چاہنی آں کہ متعصب ذہن ہر پاسے تعصب دی نگاہ ہی پاندا اے۔
چترکاری تے ادب چ ’بابا ازم‘ دیاں دو تن مڈھلیاں نشانیاں نیں جیہڑیاں وکھو وکھ وی دسدیاں نیں تے اِکو مکو ہو کے وی:
زنانی اُتے اُلاہما رکھ ، وِکٹم نوں وِکٹمايز کر، مرد/ برادری /سسٹم نوں اُلاہمے توں بچا نا۔
مظلوم دی کہانی ظالم توں سُندے رہنا تے اوس بیانیے نوں مان دے ، مظلوم دی زبان کھو نا۔
زنانیاں بارے جھوٹیاں، گندیاں تے فحش لکھتاں لٹریچر بنا کے پیش کر زنانی کھیپ نوں رد کرنا۔
زنانی تے اُلاہما، وِکٹم نوں وِکٹمايز کرنا ۔
ساہت وچ ساڈا تجربہ اے، جتھے کوئی کم کسُترا ہوندا اے، اُلاہما زنانی تے آندا اے، جد کہ اوہی اوس کسُترے کم دا نشانا وی ہوندی اے۔ مثال: طلاق ہوگئی یا بچہ نہ ہویا تے اوہدی ذاتی تے ماحولی قیمت زنانی نوں ہی دینی پینی اے ، اُتوں ذمے داری اوہدی من کے تے اُلاہما اوہدے تے رکھ کے زنانی نوں ای ہتک تے ظلم دا نشانا بنایا جاندا اے ۔ ایہدی اُتلی مثال حدود آرڈیننس وچ ’زنا باالرضا‘ دا خیال اے جتھےریپ دی وِکٹم زنانی نوں قانون دی مدد نال اک واری فیر وِکٹمائز کیتا جاندا اے۔
پنجابی ادب وچ ایہدی اک مثال ایہہ اے:
(منظور جھلا دا اِک گیت)
منظور جھلے دا گیت ’لگی والیاں نوں نیند نہیں آوندی‘ اسیں ساریاں کنی واری سنیا ہونا اے تے کنے مشہور گائیکاں ایہنوں گایا ہونا اے۔ کیہ ہُن تائيں کسے پنجابی دانشور یاں سوجھوان نے ایہہ نوٹ کیتا کہ ایس گیت کنا وڈا جھوٹھ بولیا گیا اے؟ سوجھواناں تےنہیں دسیا، مینوں پتا لگا اک ان پڑھ زنانی توں۔ لاہور ریڈیو تے ایہہ گیت لگیا ہویا سی عالم لوہار دے انگ وچ، میں جھومدی پئی ساں کہ میری ماں کولوں لنگھی، کہندی اے، ’’منظور جھلا وی اصلوں ای جھلا اے، جیہدا سبھ کجھ لُٹیا گیا اوسے نوں دوش دتی جاندا اے۔‘‘ ۔ میں جھومنا بند کر دتا تےسسی پنوں فیر اک وار پڑھی۔
پتا لگا، سسی تے سوال چُکن وچ جھلےؔ دا مقصد ایہہ سی کہ پنوں دے اغوا تے فیر اوہدی موت دا الزام اوہدے قاتل بھراواں تے نہ آوے۔ بھراواں تے الزام دا مطلب اے اوہدے ٹبر برادری اُتے الزام۔ اوہدی تھاں بولو جھوٹھ دب کے، ایس ٹریجڈی دی ذمے واری وی زنانی نوں دیو، سارے منن گے تے ویکھ لو، پنجاب وچ سارے من دے نیں۔
جھلاؔ پیندی سٹے سسی دے پیار تے شک، کہندا اے: ‘لگی والیاں نُوں نیند نہیں آؤندی / تیری کیویں نی اَکھ لگ گئی’۔ فیر زُلیخا، ہیر، تے سوہنی نُوں اُچیاں کر کر وکھاندا اے، فیر چکور، مور تے کونج لیاندا اے، اخیر کہندا اے سسی نوں وی چھڈو تے زمانےنُوں وی، ‘ گل لگیاں دی پُچھ منظورؔ تُوں’ / ‘اوہو سوندا جیہنوں یاد نہیں ستاؤندی’۔ ایتھے اپنے ہی گھڑے ہوئے اک فضول کلیے تے اوہنے سسی نوں واریا، تے گل مکا دتی۔
جھلےؔ نے ایہہ نہیں سوچیا ، ہر کوئی اِکو مہار دا نہیں ہوندا، بھلیا لوکا، کوئی انسان ایہناں سیچوایشناں وچ سوں وی جاندے نیں۔ایتھے جھلے ؔنے جہالت نال کم لیا تے اگے دھوکھے نال۔ دھوکھا ایہہ دتا سو، جیویں سسی جے جاگدی رہندی تے پنوں نوں اوہدے بھرا اپنے نال نہ لے جا سکدے، جیویں سسی اوہناں نوں روک سکدی سی۔ مرد دے ٹبر نوں اک اوپری زنانی کیویں نفی کر سکدی اے، تے اوتھے جتھے اوہ اپنی کرنی تے تلے ہوئے ہوون؟ فیر ایس بھولے بادشاہ اپنی پدر شاہی جہالت تے دھوکھے نوں ہتک وچ ولھیٹیا ، سسی نوں ’نی‘ کر کرکے بلایا ، تے ایہہ کاری حملہ اِک سوہنے گیت وچ ڈھال کے ساڈے ہتھ پھڑایا۔
لگدا اے، اوس زمانے جد جھلے ؔنے ایہہ گیت لکھیا ، خورے اوہنوں کسے زنانی تے ڈاڈھا رنج ہووے تے اوہ ہر حال اوس تے الزام رکھنا چاہندا ہووے ۔ ایسے لئی پُنوں دی موت دا سوگ منان دے جوش وچ اوہ ایہہ وی بھل گیا کہ ’پُنوں توں پہلے جان تے سسی دی گئی سی‘۔
جنے ظالم تے سخت دل پُنوں دے پیوبھرا سن جیہناں اوہنوں اوہدی شگناں دی رات قابو کیتا، اونا ای ظالم تے سخت دل منظور جھلاؔ سی جیہنے ایہہ گیت لکھ کے سسی تے اوہ اُلاہمے رکھےجیہڑے سسی پُنوں دی کہانی لکھن والے شاہ عبدالطیف بھٹائی نے نہیں رکھے سی…… تے اونے ای ظالم اسیں آں جیہڑے ایس جھوٹھ تے اج تائيں جھومنے پئے آں۔ پر فیر ایہو تے کمال اے ’بابا از م‘ دا۔
جھلاؔ (1929 – 1973کوئی ا کلا نہیں، پیلو ( 1563- 1606) نے وی ‘مرزا صاحباں’ وچ جو کجھ مرزے دیاں ماواں بھیناں تے ونجھل دے مونہوں اکھوايا اوہ ’بابا از م‘ دا کُھلا پرچار اے- جیویں ہر میل دی زنانی اپنی حیاتی وچ کئی وار ’کنجری‘ دا اکھر اپنے لئی سُندی اے، اوویں ای پیلو دا ایہہ فرمان وچلے تے ہیٹھلے میلاں دیاں پنجابی زنانیاں کئی وار سُندیاں تے برداشت کردیاں نیں۔
چڑھدے مرزے خان نوں ، ونجھل دیندا مت
بھٹھ رناں دی دوستی کھری جیہناں دی مت
ایہہ تے اُکا دو مثالاں نیں پنجابی ادب چ وِکٹم نوں وِکٹمايز کرن دیاں۔ انج تُسیں ویکھو تے چوکھیاں مل جان گیاں
مظلوم دی کہانی ظالم توں سُندے رہنا
تواریخ وچ ویکھیا اے کہ کجھ گروہ ظالماں دا تاریخی رول کردے نیں تے اوس لئی اوہ کجھ گروہاں نوں مظلوماں دا تاریخی رول کردے رہن تے مجبور کر کے رکھدے نبں۔ مثال: بادشاہ تے رعایا، مالک تے غلام، سرمایہ کار تے مزدور، زمیندار تے مزارعے، مرد تےعورت ۔ جے اسیں رعایا دا حال بادشاہاں توں، غلاماں دیاں کہانیاں مالکاں توں، مزدوراں دے حالات سرمایہ کاراں توں، مزارعیاں دا حال زمینداراں توں، عورتاں اُتے بیتی مرداں توں سُندے رہواں گے تے جیویں اسیں پِدرشاہی کلچر وچ چوکھا رجے ہوئے آں۔
سانوں پتا اے، ایہناں وچ سماجی طاقت اک گروہ ہتھیں اے جیہدے نال اوہ دوجے گروہاں نوں قابو رکھدے آئے نیں، فیر وی جتھے سانوں موقعہ لبھدا اے، اسیں وی طاقتور گروہ دے نمائندے دی گل سُننے آں، کمزور گروہ دے نمائندے گل تے کن وی نہیں دھردے۔ نتیجہ ایہہ بئی عورت دی کہانی اکثر مرد لکھاری ہی بیان کردے پئے ہوندے نیں۔ایہدے وچ مسئلہ ایہہ اے، بیان کرن والا آپ استحصالی گروہ توں اے، اوہدے ذاتی مفاد اوس گروہ نال جُڑے ہوے نیں، اوہ نہ تے زنانیاں دے گروہی مفاداں نوں ساہمنے لیا سکدا اے تے نہ اوہناں دا تحفظ کر سکدا اے۔ ایس لئی کوئی مرد لکھاری جد کوئی اجیہا مسئلہ بیانیے وچ لیاندا اے جیہڑا بہتا مرداں دا اپنا مسئلہ اے تے جیہدے پاروں زنانیاں ، بال تے بالڑیاں کل حیاتی دا عذاب جھلدیاں نیں، تے اوہ اوس مسئلے نال نبڑن دی ذمے داری زنانیاں تے پا کے مرد اگے ٹُر جاندے نیں۔
اِنسسٹ بالاں ، اُچیچا بالڑیاں، دے جنسی استحصال دی اک شکل اے جیہڑ ا بہتا مرد دے ہتھوں ہوندا اے۔ ایتھے سرے وچ سہارا سروسز سوسائٹی نے اک پنجابی ڈرامہ ایس مسئلے تے پیش کیتا جیہڑا ساڈے دوست شاعر اجمیر روڈے ہوراں لکھیا، ناں سی ’میلے ہتھ: ٹینٹڈ ہینڈز‘۔ اوہ سُپر ہٹ گیا، پنجابی کمیونٹی نے رج کے سلاہیا۔ اسیں وی ویکھیا، پہلے تے اوہ ڈرامہ نما نما ٹُردا رہیا جیویں اردو کامیڈی ’فیملی‘ ڈرامے ٹی وی تے ہوندے نیں، اک ماں، پیو، دھی، تے اک چاچا ٹائپ رشتے دار ۔میں سوچیا، خیر اے، پورے پِڑ نوں سمجھاون لئی ذرا نرم کر کے گل ہو رہی اے۔ پر اوس ڈرامے دا اخیر ہضم نہیں ہو سکیا۔ اخیر وچ اوہ رشتے دار وی غائب ہو جاندا اے تے پیو وی، بِنا کسے ریزولیوشن دے۔ سٹیج تے ماں تے دھی کلیاں ایس مسئلے دے اثرات تے ٹرامے نال ڈیل کرن لئی رہ جاندیاں نیں۔ ایہہ ویکھو فیر ڈِیل کیویں کردیاں نیں، اگ بال کے اک رِیچوال کردیاں نیں جیہدے وچ کڑی اپنے بچا لئی اوس بندے نوں معاف کر دیندی اے۔
اُف!!!
ہاؤس فُل کیویں نہ جاندا، بابے اجمیر نے مرد اں نوں جیویں بانہہ دے کے بچا لیا۔ گل نیوکلئیر فیملی توں باہر نہیں جان دتی، زیادتی کرن والے دی کوئی پکڑ نہیں ہوئی، مجرم نوں جرم دی سزا نہیں ملی۔ اوہ بچیاں تے کڑیاں جیہڑیاں ایہہ دھروہ برداشت پئیاں کردیاں نیں اوہناں نوں کیہ پیغام ملیا؟
پیغام ملیا کہ کم تے ایہہ بھیڑا اے پر جے تہاڈے نال ہو جاوے تے تسیں وڈیاں بنو تے اندرو اندری کرودھ غصہ کڈھ کے اپنے بچا لئی بندے نوں معاف کر دیو، گل مکاؤ تے ہوراں نوں دسنا اپنی تے اپنے ٹبر دی بدنامی کرنا اے۔ غور کرو تے ہوراں نوں نہ دسن دا مطلب اےاوس مرد نوں کمیونٹی دے دوجے بالاں تے بالڑیاں تے ایہہ ظلم کردے رہن دی کھل اے۔
جے لکھاری دا ایہہ مقصد نہیں سی تے اخیر وچ مرد نے ذمے داری کیوں نہیں لئی؟ اوہنوں کوئی سزا کیوں نہیں جھلنی پئی؟ جے لکھاری دی سوجھ اے بئی اک تھاں توں دوجی تھاں چلے جانا یا بھیج دِتا جانا مرد دی سزا اے، تے ایہہ اوہو سزا اے جیہڑی چرچاں وچ کوڑھے پادریاں نوں دیندے نیں۔ ٹرانسفر! ہاں جی، ٹرانسفر۔ نویں تھاں’ نویں لوک۔ نویں معصوماں وچ کوڑھ پھیلان دی نویں چھٹی۔
ایہدی تھاں دوواں زنانیاں نے واک آوٹ کیوں نہیں کیتا، تے سانوں سٹیج تے دو مرد ایہہ رِیچوال، ایہہ سبب کردے کیوں نہیں دکھائے گے بئی کیویں ہووے جے ایس پدر شاہی سسٹم وچ مرداں دے اندر دا ایہہ عذاب بالاں تے زنانیاں تے نازل نہ ہووے تے نہ اوہناں نوں بھگتنا پوے۔ کیوں دوواں زنانیاں نوں کاؤنسلنگ تے دوجیاں سپورٹ سروسز ورتدیاں نہیں وکھایا گيا؟ مرد دے ایس دھروہ نوں اُکا زنانیاں نیں کیوں بھگتیا؟
ایہہ ای ’بابا ازم‘ اے۔ کمیونٹی وچ جنسی استحصال جیہا گُجھا تے گنجھلک مسئلہ کھولو تے اوہنوں مرد دے حق وچ ریزالوو کر کے ہتھ پھڑاؤ، واہوا اے۔ ہاؤس فُل وی فیر ای جاندا اے-
زنانیاں بارے جھوٹھیاں، گندیاں تے فحش لکھتاں لٹریچر بنا کے پیش کرنا
انج تے میں دنیا دی ہر مشہور زنانی بارے مرداں دے لکھے فحش قصیدے دیکھے ہوئے نیں، پر اوہ اردو یا انگریزی وچ سن یاں پمفلٹ ، گٹر پریساں وچ چھپے مضمون، جیہناں دے لکھاری اوہناں نوں لٹریچر بنا کے پیش نہیں سن پئے کردے۔ دو تِن سال پہلے پاکستانی پنجاب وچ کہانیاں دی اِک کتاب چھپی جیہڑی ’بابا ازم‘ دے ایس گندے پکھ دی اِک وڈی مثال اے۔اوہدے وچ لکھاری نے اپنے ذہن دا فحش گند کڈھ کے پنجاب دیاں کجھ منیاں پرمنیاں فنکار تے لکھاری زنانیاں تے لیا سٹیا، جیہناں وچوں کجھ فوت ہو گیاں سن تے ایس حملے دا جواب وی نہیں دے سکدیاں سن، جیویں نسرین انجم بھٹی ؔتے شائستہ حبیبؔ۔
حملہ اینا گھٹیا سی کہ جیہڑے لوک اوہناں زنانیاں نوں جاندے سن اوہناں لئی چُپ رہنا اوکھا ہو گیا۔ میں اپنا ایہہ لیکھ بہتا گندا نہیں کرنا چاہندی ایس لی اک ’نرم‘ مثال دینی آں ایہناں دے ایس ’لٹریچر‘ دی۔
بڑا احتجاج ہویا، لکھاری توں معافی منگن تے کہانی واپس لین دی منگ وی کیتی گئی۔ لکھاری تے اوہدے دو تِن حواری اڑ گئے، نہ کہانی واپس لئی تے نہ معافی منگی۔
پنجابی ادب وچ ’بابا ازم‘ دے صدقے، اوس لکھاری دی کوئی پکڑ نہیں ہوئی، اوہ ہُن وی دانشور دے طور ادبی محفلاں وچ شرکت کردا اے۔
مڈھلی گل
پنجابی ادب تے ساہت وچ ’بابا ازم‘ دیاں اُکا ایہہ تِن نہبں کئی ہور صورتاں وی نیں، سانوں ایہناں تعصباں توں جان چھڑان لئی ایہدیاں ساریاں صورتاں جانن تے پچھانن دی لوڑ اے۔ ایس بارے تیجی نشانی والے قصے وچ کجھ گلاں ساہمنے آئیاں جیہڑیاں سانوں ’بابا از م‘ نوں سمجھن تے اوہدا مقابلہ کرن چ کم آ سکدیاں نیں۔
اوس فحش کتاب دا لکھاری تے اوہدے حواری زنانیاں دی ایس ابیوز نوں لٹریجر کہی جاندے سن جد کجھ دوستاں اوہو کوجھے اکھر تے غلیظ گلاں اوہناں دیاں زنانیاں بارے کیتیاں، ایس تے اوہ ڈاڈھا تڑفے۔ میں پُچھنی آں، جے ساڈے بارے لکھے گئے جھوٹھ ٹھیک سی تے فیر ایہہ جھوٹھ ٹھیک کیوں نہیں سی؟ ایہدے وچ اِک مسئلہ ہور وی اے، اپنی زنانی دی ہتک دا بدلہ لین لئی اگلے دی زنانی دی ہتک کرنا مرداں دے بنائے ایس سسٹم دا مہار اے، ساڈا نہیں۔ میں ایس بھیڑے طریقے دے خلاف آں، ایہہ گل میں فیس بک گروپ چ وی کہی سی جیہڑا اوس ٹائم بنیا سی ، تے میں کجھ دوستاں نوں وی ایس کم توں ہٹکن دی کوشش کیتی سی۔ کیوں جے سوال فیر اوہی اے، جے اوہ غلط سی تے ایہہ ٹھیک کیویں اے؟
دو گلاں پاروں میں اوس ٹائم ایس طریقے دے بر خلاف کھلا سٹینڈ نہیں لیا۔ اک ایہہ کہ ہتھیار تے اکو سن، پر دوواں پاسے مقصد اک نہیں سی۔ کتاب لکھن والے دا مقصد جمہوریت پسند فنکار زنانیاں نوں کھجل کرنا سی، تے نعیم سادھو ہوراں ایہہ ہتھیار اوہناں نوں روکن لئی استعمال کیتا۔
ہن، جد دو ورھے لنگھ گئے نیں، میں پچھے جھاتی پا نی آں تے اوہناں زنانیاں دی ابیوز دے برخلاف کُھلا سٹینڈ نہ لین تے مینوں ول وی اپنے آپ تے شرم آندی اے۔ میں سمجھنی آں، میرےتھڑن وچ ’بابا از م‘ دا ہتھ سی۔ جدوں مینوں فیس بک تے مشتاق صوفی ہوراں دی اک پوسٹ توں ایس کوجھی لکھت دا پتا لگا تے جدوں تک میں اِک دو کوٹیشناں ویکھیاں، مورچے بن چکے سن، گولاباری شروع سی، تے دوواں پاسے مرد اک دوجے تے حملہ آور ہو چکے سن۔ میں کوشش کیتی پر میری شنوائی نہیں ہوئی۔جیویں آنر کلنگز وچ ہوندا اے، ایس جھگڑے و چ وی دوواں پاسے زنانیاں نے ہی مرداں دیاں زیادتیاں برداشت کیتیاں۔
ایہہ سچوایشن اُکا میری نہیں، دوجیاں جمہوری زنانیاں وی بھاویں ایہو محسوس کردیاں پیاں سن، ‘نہ ہاتھ باگ پر ہے نہ پا ہے رکاب میں’۔ اوس ویلے لاہور دی فیمینسٹ کو لیکٹیو نے کجھ سچوایشن سنبھالی تے دو تِن چونویں کم کیتے۔ اوہناں دیاں ممبراں اوس کتاب بارے اک اکٹھ وچ پہنچ کے اوس ٹولے نوں چیلنج کیتاتے اپنے خیال پیش کیتے، نسرین انجم بھٹیؔ دے اک سرتی شعرتے اک سوہنی میورل بنائی گئی، شہر وچ موقعے دیاں تھاواں تے پوسٹر لائے گے۔ مگروں زنانیاں دی گل بات ہوئی ای میل راہیں تے ایہہ متھیا گیا کہ پدرشاہی کلچر دے بر خلاف اک ویب سائٹ بنائی جائے جتھے جمہوریت پسند فنکار زنانیاں دے کم نوں اکٹھا کرکے ساہمنے لیایا جاوے، اوہناں دے کم تے ریسرچ کیتی جاوے، عورت دشمن چیزاں ساہمنے لیائیاں جان، تے انج پنجابی ادب تے ساہت وچ زنانیاں تے زیادتیاں نوں ٹھلیا جاوے۔
نسرین انجم بھٹی دے شعر تے ایہہ میورل بی بی ہاجرہ نے بنائی۔
ہن وی اگے جان دا رستہ ایہو ای اے۔ ایس پراجیکٹ نوں فیمینسٹ کولیکٹو، عورت مارچ لاہور تے پنجا ب وچ عورتاں دیاں دوجیاں جمہوری تنظیماں ہتھ پواون تے فیر کوئی مضبوط تے سوہنی گل بن سکدی اے۔
(سارا کاظمی تے شاہد مرزا دی مہربانی جیہناں دی فیڈبیک ایس مضمون چ وادھا پایا۔)
The legacy of Persian can be seen in the new literary genres it introduced to South Asia. In the writing of history, Persian introduced the biography, memoirs, chronicles and letters. Thanks to this literature, we have a remarkably detailed picture of Indian society from the descriptions of Mughal court life, to the biographies of religious thinkers to descriptions of the musicians, artists and commoners of Delhi.
The legacy of Persian is felt in the many loan words that have entered modern Indian vernacular languages. The influence of Persian on Urdu is especially noteworthy. While the legacy of Urdu is talked about in India and Pakistan today in poetry, film and ghazals, this is no less the legacy of Persian from which Urdu inherited much of its poetic tradition.
The romance tradition in Punjabi and Bengali was inspired by the tradition of Persian language and culture. Persian is still sung in the qawallis of Amir Khusrau and it left its mark on Sikh religious thought and modern Islamic philosophy. Lastly, through the writings of Sufis like ‘Ali Hujwiri (Data Ganj Baksh) and Nizam ud-Din Auliya, Persian has enriched the religious and cultural life of Indians and Pakistanis in terms of love, compassion and human feeling.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the Mughal empire declined and India fragmented into various competing kingdoms, confederacies and principalities. It was also during the eighteenth century that the British began to emerge as the dominant European colonial power.[1]
During the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Urdu grew in popularity and ultimately displaced Persian as the preferred language of poetry across much of North India. Nevertheless, Persian retained its prestige as the language of culture and refinement during this period especially in prose.
Prose
One of the most fascinating historical accounts of this period is Abu Mirza Abu Talib Khan’s (1752-1806) The Tales of Mirza Abu Talib Khan in Asia, Africa and Europe (Masir Talib fi Bilad Afranji). Born and raised in a wealthy family from Lucknow, Abu Talib travels to London, Paris, Constantinople, Cape Town and Baghdad and writes about the people he meets there and their social customs:
I was also much pleased to observe, that in European society, when a person is speaking, the others never interrupt him, and the conversation is carried on in a gentle tone of voice. One evening, while I was engaged in conversation with the lady of the house, the servant entered with a largely tray of costly china; and his foot catching the edge of the carpet, he fell, and broke the whole to pieces: the lady, however, never noticed the circumstance, but continued her conversation with me in the most disturbed manner.[2]
On London, he writes:
The greatest ornament London can boast, is its numerous squares; many of which are very extensive, and only inhabited by people of large fortune. Each square contains a kind of garden in its center, surrounded with iron rails, to which every proprietor of a house in the square has a key, and where the women and children can walk, at all hours without being liable to molestation or insult.[3]
In his Diary of the Revolt of 1857 (Dastanbu), Ghalib (1797-1869) writes about the siege of Delhi:
“The city has become a desert … By God, Delhi is no more a city, but a camp, a cantonement. No fort, no city, no bazaars, no watercourses … Four things kept Delhi alive – the Fort, the daily crowds at the Jama Masjid, the weekly walk to the Yamuna Bridge, and the yearly fair of the flower-men. None of these survives, so how could Delhi survive? Yes [it is said that] there was once a city of that name in the realm of India.”[4]
THE COLONIAL PERIOD
The British abolished Persian as the official language of government in 1837. With the official institution of English and vernacular Indian languages such as Urdu and Bengali as languages of education, the status of Persian in India declined.
The growth of nationalism in India under the British and the idea of “one country, one language” meant that Persian was increasingly sidelined as a “foreign” language and one that belonged to India’s past.
Muhammad Iqbal
Born in Sialkot in 1877, Muhammad Iqbal is one of the greatest poets in the Urdu tradition of the twentieth century and the National Poet of Pakistan. He wrote most of his poetry, however, in Persian and he remains one of the few Persian poets from India who is known in modern Iran.
Iqbal’s mostly long philosophical poems show the influence of Rumi and Bedil as well as Goethe and Nietzche. He interprets Sufi concepts such as ‘ishq (love) in light of the philosophy of the European Enlightenment, namely as a force of will that animates and motivates the self (khudi) to create, imagine and conquer the world:
The luminous point whose name is the Self Is the life-spark beneath our dust. By Love it is made more lasting More living, more burning, more glowing.
Iqbal’s epic poem, The Book of Eternity (Javednama), was inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. In it, Iqbal journeys through the celestial spheres with the poet Rumi as his guide encountering the spirits of the Buddha, Zoroaster, Christ, Muhammad, Hallaj, Ghalib and Nietzche along the way.
NOTES
[1] The word “modern” is not without its problems, but it refers here to a period where, even before the advent of European colonialism, India was opening up to the world. The Mughal Empire was part of a cosmopolitan Persianate world and India at the height of Mughal rule was well-integrated into a larger world economy.
For over two centuries, the Mughal Empire united and ruled over much of India. It created a classical culture which combined the finest aspects of Persianate and Indic traditions. It united peoples from various cultures and religions across the subcontinent while the Mughal courts in Delhi, Agra and Lahore welcomed artists and traders from across Europe and Asia and Iran in particular.
Indo-Persian Literature
Under the Mughals, Persian became the official language of education and its use expanded among the various religions, classes and castes of North India. It became the language of court literature not only in Delhi, Agra and Lahore but also among regional sultanates such as the Golconda Sultanate (1519-1687). Its use as a literary language also grew through poetic assemblies (mushaira), storytelling traditions (dastangoi) and Sufi monasteries (khanqahs) as well as the language of culture.
Iranian poets increasingly flocked to the Mughal courts so much so that India had become the leading centre of Persian poetry during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By this time, a classical Persian canon (Sa’di, Nizami and Hafiz) was in the making and the Mughals patronized not only new poets but also oversaw the translation of works in Sanskrit, Greek and Arabic into Persian.
Prose
The Indo-Persian tradition of romance (qissa or dastan) was already known during the Delhi Sultanate. Amir Khusrau’s The Tale of the Four Dervishes(Qissa-ye Chahar Dervesh) was a collection of tales and stories told by four dervishes as wise counsel to a king seeking immortality.
The Epic of Hamza(Hamzanama), composed under the reign of Akbar, was based originally on an oral tradition of storytelling. It tells of the adventures and exploits of Amir Hamza (an uncle of the Prophet Muhammad) in a world of battles, courtly politics, magic, fairies and trickery.
The writing of history flourished under the Mughals. Abu’l Fazl’s Akbarnamacombined biography and chronicle in its portrayal of Akbar as the ideal monarch.[1] The memoirs of the Emperor Jahangir (Jahangirnama) tell us about the rivers and lakes of Kashmir while Dargah Quli Khan (b. 1710) provides a glimpse into the lives of the commoners, musicians, dancers, poets and artists of Mughal Delhi.
Poetry
Poets like Faizi (1547-1595), ‘Urfi (1556-1590), Talib (d. 1626), Qudsi (d. 1656), Kalim (d. 1650) and Sa’ib (d. 1677) continued writing in the classical Persian style while also expanded Persian’s poetic vocabulary through exchanges with languages like Sanskrit, Hindi, Turkish and Arabic.
In his masnavi (long narrative poem), Nal Daman, Faizi adapted a story from the Mahabharata with its themes of love, exile into a Persian saga on the lover and the beloved:[2]
The burning of desire and heartache Like wine poured at once in two glasses Like the same note sounded from two different keys The same intoxication in two different spots. The suffering that love induced in the Lover, the Beloved welcomed as her guest. The bell the Lover told in grief, echoed in the Beloved’s heart.[3]
The poet Kalim wrote about a famine in the Deccan:
Not only the laughing buds Are always fleeing from me … Their relationship to me Is like that of the shore to the sea: Always coming towards me, Then ever fleeing from me. Life’s tragedy lasts but two days I’ll tell you what these two are for: One day to attach the heart to this and that; One day to detach it again.[4]
‘Urfi crafted a more personal and emotional style:
From my friend’s gate – how can I describe The manner in which I went, How full of longing I came, Yet how embittered I went! How I beat my head on the wall In that narrow alleyway … In ecstatic intoxication I came In troubled silence I went.[5]
Mughal poets praised the Sufi path of love and union with the divine over the formalism and hypocrisy of organized religion:
Give up the path of the Muslims Come to the temple To the master of the wine house So that you may see the divine secrets.[6]
This was carried to the point of blasphemy by Sarmad (c. 1590-1661):
He who understood the secrets of the Truth Became vaster than the vast heaven; The Mullah says “Ahmed [the Prophet Muhammad] went to heaven”; Sarmad says “Nay! Heaven came down to Ahmed!”[7]
By the eighteenth century, all classes in Mughal society who were educated in Persian began using it as a literary language.
Bedil
Born in 1644 in Patna, ‘Abdul Qadir Bedil was of Turkish descent. He was raised by his uncle after the death of his parents and was educated in Persian, Arabic and Turkish. He studied Sufism and was also known to the Mughal court (most notably Aurangzeb’s son, Muhammad ‘Azam).
Bedil is considered one of the leading poets of the “Indian style” of Persian poetry (sabk-i-Hindi). His philosophical and mystical verses are complex, challenging and captivating:
I read in the wave’s fickle, delicate form The preface of the sea, the wind’s footprint.[8]
A delicate act is learning the secrets of love The pen slips in scribing the word of error[9]
The trappings of desire adorn every heart’s shop There’s no mirror but its house of clarity reflects a bazaar[10]
Regard the spring painted with hues of new secrets What your imagination never held the spring carries[11]
Only wonder I seek from the world’s estate Like the wall’s mirrored image is my house and what it holds[12]
Bedil was cited as an influence on both Ghalib and Iqbal in their Urdu and Persian verse. His verse remains popular in Afghanistan and Tajikistan where they are studied extensively.
[2] Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics (Columbia University Press, New York: 2012), 204
[3]Masnawi Nal-Daman Faizi, ed. Muhammad Taiyab Siddiqui (Patna: 1987), 191 (12-15) cited in cited in Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics (Columbia University Press, New York: 2012) 216.
[4] Annemarie Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals: History, Art and Culture (Reaktion Books Ltd., London: 2004), 247.
The Delhi Sultanate united North India for the first time since the reign of Emperor Harsha (r. 606-647). It integrated India into the international trading networks and cosmopolitan civilization of the Islamic world. It also introduced new ideas in art, architecture, religion and technology, including paper-making which revolutionized literature, scholarship and the graphic arts.[1]
INDO-PERSIAN LITERATURE
The Mongol invasions of Central Asia and Khorasan during the thirteenth century caused Persian speaking poets, artists and Sufis to flee cities like Balkh, Bukhara and Samarqand and settle in and around Delhi.[2] For a while, in fact, Delhi was seen as a haven for Persian scholars and artists in Asia.
Indo-Persian literature developed during the Delhi Sultanate through both court patronage and through an expansion of ever-widening networks of Persian-speaking literati, merchants, artists and Sufi monasteries (khanqah) across North India. Sufi centres like Nizam ud-Din Auliya’s (1238-1325) in Delhi also attracted men of learning like Amir Khusrau (1253-1325) and the historian, Zia ud-din Barani (1285-1358) who wrote in Persian.[3]
Prose
One branch of literature that Persian introduced to India was the writing of history. In fact, Persian literature introduced new genres such as biography, memoirs, chronicles, travel writing and letter writing to Indian literature.
The two best-known works of history written during the Delhi Sultanate were Barani’s, The History of Firoz Shah (Tarikh-e- Firozshahi) and The Rules of Government (Fatwa-i-jahandari). The former chronicled the history of the Sultanate from Balban (1266-87) to Firoz Shah Tughlaq (1309-1388) while the latter emphasized the importance of the study of history.
The compilation of conversations between Sufis and their disciples (malfuzat) was another branch of Indo-Persian prose literature that figured prominently during the Sultanate. The malfuzat also included hagiographies on the Sufi masters and their teachings. The Morals of the Heart (Fawa’id al-Fawad) by Amir Hasan Sijzi (1254-1337) was one such malfuzat on Nizam ud-Din.
The Delhi Sultanate also saw the appearance of Indo-Persian fiction which combined Persian, Arabic and Indic styles of storytelling. The Tutinama of Zia al-Din Nakshabi Badayuni (d. 1350), based on the Sanskrit Sukasapatati (‘Seventy Tales of the Parrot’), was one such collection of fifty-two tales told by a parrot to its mistress to prevent her from committing adultery.[4]
Poetry
While Sufi poets like Shah Bu ‘Ali Qalandar (d. 1323) and Fahkr-al Din Iraqi (1213-1289) wrote during this period, few poets could match the renown and influence of Amir Khusrao.
Amir Khusrao
Amir Khusrao remains one of the greatest Indo-Persian poets. A court poet for five of the Delhi sultans and a disciple of Nizam ud-Din, Khusrao composed five dīwān (collections) of poetry that included qasida (panegyric), masnavi (narrative) and over four thousand ghazal (love poems).[5]
Born Abu’l Hasan Yamin ud-Din Khusrao in Delhi in 1253, Khusrao was raised by his maternal grandfather, Imad al-Mulk, a powerful nobleman in the service of the Sultan Iltutmish (r. 1211-1236).
Khusrau began his career as a poet at the age of 20 as the protégé of senior poets at the courts of Delhi. He also served patrons in Bengal and Multan and was on one occasion, captured by the Mongols who raided Multan in 1285. He later wrote an elegy on his experience:
People shed so many tears in all directions That five other rivers have appeared in Multan I wanted to speak of the fire in my heart But a hundred fiery tongues flared up in my mouth[6]
In 1289, Khusrau returned to Delhi where he became the chief court poet of Jalaluddin Khalji (r. 1290-96) and Ala’ ud-Din Khalji (r. 1296-1316). It was during this period that he wrote much of his finest work including his ghazals on love and longing:
I am about to breathe my last. Come, so I may live. What good will it do for you to come once I am no more?
My heart left me but longing for you won’t leave my heart. My heart broke apart, but pain For you won’t diminish.
Khusrao wrote in a style at once mystical and secular:
Bring bright wine, for dawn has shown its face At a moment like this there’s no being without wine.[7]
There is a prosperous and populous city where fragments of moon gleam at every turn. Each fragment holds a shard of my shattered heart.[8]
His poetry also captured the Indian landscape of monsoon clouds and rainy seasons:
The clouds and the rain and I and my love waiting to say farewell: For my part, weeping, and for the cloud’s part, and for my love’s.[9]
He also wrote of his love for Nizamuddin:
I have become you, you have become me I have become life, you have become body From now one, let no one say that I am other and you are another.[10]
Amir Khusrau is one of the few Indo-Persian poets who became well known outside of India. His verse is said to have even inspired the great Persian poet, Hafiz of Shiraz (1315-1390).[11] His works are still read in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan while in India and Pakistan, his poetry has been popularized through musical traditions like qawalli.
NOTES
[1] Richard M. Eaton, India in the Persianate Age: 1000-1765 (University of California Press, Oakland, CA), 136. See also Keay, India: A History (Harper Collins, London: 2001), 247.
Like the classical Western tradition, the classical Indian tradition has two classical languages: Sanskrit and Tamil. Most histories of classical Indian civilization, however, focus on the Sanskrit literary tradition to Tamil’s neglect.
Both traditions, I argue, are integral to our understanding of classical Indian literature. The Tamil tradition is classical not only in the sense that it is ancient (dating its earliest poetry back to the 100 BCE to 200 CE), but in that it constitutes the foundation of an entire tradition that continues without a break to the present.
Early classical Tamil literature was written in a society that recalls Italy during the Renaissance. Southern India during the turn of the Christian era was a confederation of states (the Pandya, the Cheras and the Cholas) which were continually warring and trading with one another.
The Tamil states grew wealthy from sea trade routes that connected India to the West (including the Roman Empire which sought peppers, indigo, cotton and pearls from South India) and South East Asia. Classical Tamil poetry tells the stories of wealthy merchants, warehouses bulging with goods and ships from many different countries meeting at palm lined ports along the east coast.
Classical Tamil poetry is said to have been composed in academies or assembles called the Sangam during which time the principles of poetics, rhetoric and prosody were outlined in the Tolkapiyyam, the first grammar of the Tamil language.
Classical Tamil poetry can be classed broadly into poems on the interior landscape (love, emotions) and poems on the exterior landscape (war and heroic poetry).
Landscapes and emotions are carefully interwoven in classical Tamil poetry and each poem is assigned a tinai (‘place,’ ‘region,’ ‘site’) in which the five particular landscapes or regions of the Tamil country with their accompanying seasons, flowers, waters, inhabitants, wild life and time of day correspond to the emotions of the lovers in the poems:[1]
Mountains: union (clandestine); kurunji flower; midnight; winter; waterfall;
Forest: expectancy; jasmine; evening; late summer; rivers;
Fields: irritation; marudam; before sunrise; late spring; ponds;
Seashore: separation; water lily; sunset; early summer; sea;
Desert: impatience; noon; summer; dry wells or stagnant water.
In classical Tamil poetry, nature and landscape symbolize the various moods and experiences of lovers. For instance, a love poem may follow the kurinici convention where the theme is the surreptitious meeting at night of an unmarried woman and her lover in the mountains.
The puram poems also have their thematic situations which deal with the warfare and exploits of kings as well as ethical instruction in the form of lyrics, panegyrics and hymns. The puram poems of classical Tamil poetry tell us about the kings, chieftains, battles, political and social life of ancient Tamil kingdoms.
The secular, sensual and naturalistic tone of the early Tamil poetry makes for a refreshing change to the religious and mythological tone of much of classical Sanskrit poetry. Here are some English translations of classical Tamil poetry by A.K. Ramanujan.
Sources:
Ancient Indian Literature: An Anthology (Volume Three), New Delhi : Sahitya Akademi, 2000.
Encyclopedia of Indian Literature (Volume 5), New Delhi : Sahitya Akademi, 1987-1992.
The Four Hundred Songs of War and Wisdom: An Anthology of Poems from Classical Tamil (New York : Columbia University Press, 1999), Translated by George L. Hart and Hank Heifetz.
Poems of Love and War from the Eight Anthologies, and the Ten Long Poems of Classical Tamil (selected and translated by A.K. Ramanujan).
Shah Hussain was a gay Punjabi poet of the 16th century. His love for a young man, Madho Lal, is legendary. Shah Hussain and Madho Lal are buried side by side at Shah Hussain’s shrine in Lahore. They are known to eternity as “Madho Lal Hussain.”
When I read Shah Hussain for the first time, I felt like I was looking back at myself five hundred years ago. Reading his work, as a gay Punjabi-Canadian man, gave me a sense of pride and belonging to a culture I’d long grown alienated from. I was then recently put off to see Naveed Alam trying to deny Shah Hussain’s sexuality in Alam’s introduction to his translation of Shah Hussain’s verse.
According to Alam, Shah Hussain couldn’t have been gay, because:
Shah Hussain’s poems make no overt references to homosexuality;
Shah Hussain’s love for Madho Lal was platonic;
Shah Hussain wrote in the feminine voice in keeping with Sufi tradition (where God’s devotee refers to himself in feminine terms).
Alam’s first point makes no sense. He claims that a poet like Shah Hussain cannot be gay unless he overtly expresses his homosexuality in his poetry. By this logic, a poet cannot be heterosexual either unless his heterosexuality is overtly expressed in his poetry.
In any case, Shah Hussain probably didn’t express his sexuality overtly in his poetry for good reasons.
According to the platonic love theory, Shah Hussain and Madho Lal were master and disciple respectively and their love should be seen in that context.
The problem is that there is no proof that Madho Lal (a Hindu Brahmin) was even a follower of Shah Hussain or that he was part of a Sufi order. In fact, had Madho Lal been a disciple, then it would’ve been he who was expected to write poems in praise of his master, not the other way around.
Shah Hussain wrote otherwise:
My lover grabbed my arm
Why would I ask him to let go?
Dark night drizzling, painful
The approaching hour of departure
You’ll know what love’s all about
Once it seeps into your bones…
(trans. N. Alam)
Hagiographic accounts also tell us about Shah Hussain’s love for Madho Lal:
When he looked at Madho, he signed painfully and said: ‘Friends, take heed. This boy has set my heart out of control. With one look he has made my heart restless. With one look he has taken away my heart. Taken the life out of my heart, and the soul out of my body. What should I do, friends? What should I do to make him fall in love? Friends, I’ve become a prisoner of his love. I shall not find peace till I see him” (Haqiqat al-Fuqra (‘Truth of the Saints’), c. 1660).
In another account, one of Shah Hussain’s followers spies on Madho Lal Hussain:
You [Hussein] are taking a glass of wine from Madho and kissing Madho on the forehead and the Madho is also kissing Hussein’s forehead … Madho again gives a full glass to Shah Hussein, stands and greets him respectfully. Hussein also gets up and greets Madho respectfully. The two friends remained busy in this matter, and kept kissing each other like milk and sugar … and then the two friends become one.
As for the feminine voice, Shah Hussain uses it even when not speaking to God. Shah Hussain refers to himself in feminine terms when sitting at the spinning wheel, taking part in women’s folk dances and sharing secrets with his girlfriends. This feminine voice is Shah Hussain’s soul speaking as a gay man.
In Shah Hussain, Punjabi and Pakistani gay men can hear their own voice, songs and verses singing back to them. The light and passion in his poems is smothered by people foisting their own culturally acceptable interpretations onto it. Shah Hussain’s love for Madho Lal comes alive when we embrace it fully for what it is.
Baba Najmi, a Pakistani Punjabi poet who has gained the stature of a Peoples’ Poet Laureate in the Punjab, is visiting the Diaspora this July.
Baba Bashir Husain Najmi was born in Lahore in 1948. He has published three poetry books: ‘Akhran Wich Samundar’ Ocean in Words (1986), ‘Sochan Wich Jahan’ World in Thoughts (1995) and more recently, ‘Mera Naan Insaan’ My Name Human. He is a labourer, a trade unionist and a poet who distinguishes himself from others by challenging regressive laws, rules, cultural values and political entities. He is revered by many Punjabis in India, Pakistan and the diaspora. He has won many award. A statue of him has been installed in Jalandhar to recognize his poetic peace efforts between India and Pakistan. Visit Baba Najmi’s Facebook page: facebook.com/PoetBabaNajmi. Below are the details of his July 7th appearance in Surrey
Beyond the boundaries; An event with Great poet Baba Najmi When: SATURDAY. JULY 7, from 1.30 – 4.30 pm Where: Crossroads United Church 7655 – 120 St, Delta, BC Tickets: Only $10.00
Organized by
The Committee of Progressive Pakistani Canadians (CPPC), Vancouver Chapter.
Program presented in Association with
The Dhahan Prize for Punjabi Literature, Centre for India and South Asia Research UBC and Tarksheel (Rational) Society of Canada.
Supported By
Indo Canadian Workers Association (Brampton & Vancouver), Punjabi TV Show, ‘Mehak Punjab Di’, Progressive Arts Club, Surrey.
“If you want your life, die before your death” (Shah Hussain).
This is my summary of Fauzia Rafique’s presentation on the life and poetry of Shah Hussain. The presentation was part of the Dead Poets Reading Series which took place at the Vancouver Public Library (Central) on May 6, 2018.
Shah Hussain (1538-1599) was a Punjabi poet from Lahore. He wrote 163 poems in Punjabi and introduced the kafi genre into the language.[1] His collected works remain among the top selling books of all time in Punjabi.
When he was thirty-six years old, Shah Hussain had a dispute with his religious teacher over the interpretation of the following verse:
“duniya khel tamasha hai” (‘the world’s a play and spectacle’).”
For the teacher, the verse meant the renunciation of the fleeting material world. For Shah Hussain, it meant that life is to be enjoyed. With that, he laughed, donned himself in a red cotton robe and became a dancing mendicant in the streets of Lahore.
Shah Hussain was a “malamti” Sufi, one who took pride in the “malamat” or “shaming” he was subjected to. He stood against the the political and religious establishment in support the common people. He identified himself with the julaha (weaver), the chuhra (sweeper) and the faqir. He associated with rebels like Dulla Bhatti who stirred peasant rebellions against the Emperor Akbar. His poetry reflected the folk rhythms and idiom of everyday Punjabi.
Shah Hussain was a rebel in another way. Unlike the male poets of his day who used the feminine voice (rekhti) to express the “feminine” emotions of grief and anguish, Shah Hussain wrote in the feminine voice to acknowledge and express his own self as a gay man.
If Shah Hussain’s love was transcendent, it was in the earthly sense of overcoming distinctions of class, gender, creed and sexual orientation. He belonged to no sect or lineage other than humanity’s.
Kafi 131
Swaying in ecstasy play on in the inner yard, all is near to those meditating
Rivers flow in this yard, thousands of millions of boats
Some are seen drowning, others have reached the shore
This yard has nine doors, the tenth is locked shut
No one needs to know, from where my lover comes and goes
This yard has a pretty curve, a hollow in the curve
I spread my bed in the hollow to love my lover at night!
A wild elephant in this yard, is struggling with the chain
Says Hussain the Beggar of His Beloved, (the elephant) is teasing the awake
(Trans. Fauzia Rafique)
Jhume jhum khaid lai munjh vehRay, japdeyaN nooN hur naiRay
Vehray de vich nadiyaN vagan, baiRay lakh hazar
kaiti iss vich Dubdi vekhi, kaiti langhi paar
iss vehRay de nauN darvazay, dusswaiN qulf chuRhai
tiss darvazay de mehram nahiN, jit shauh aaway jai
vehRay de vich aala soohay, aalay de vich taaqi
taaqi de vich sej vichaawaN, apnay pia sung raati
iss vehRay vich makna haathi, sangal naal khahaiRay
kahe Hussain Faqir SaeeN da, jagdeyaN kooN chehRay
Singer, Composer, Music Therapist Pervaiz Akhtar sings Punjabi Sufi poetry and Urdu Ghazals. He has issued five albums featuring poetry of Khwaja Ghulam Farid, Madhulal Husain and Bulleh Shah, among others; and, his repertoire as a composer includes works of Rumi, Hafiz, Saadi and Amir Khusrow in Farsi. His Jazz fusion concerts have been held in Pakistan, Europe and the USA. For more information:
Pervaiz is visiting from Copenhagen and he will stay in Vancouver till the middle of March. This presents us with a rare opportunity to listen to him in a public event. Details are below.
‘Kahe Fakeer’ by Pervaiz Akhtar
7pm, Friday, March 9, 2018 Punjab Banquet Hall
8166 128 St #215, Surrey
(604) 598-7611
$30 per person (dinner included), $50 for two.
To book your ticket, call: 604-780-0164
Thinkfest 2018 chose to promote a sub-standard work on the life of Punjabi author, radio artist and arts activist Nasreen Anjum Bhatti. There was an intense demonstration of solidarity with the late author by people who were there to protest against this choice.
Nasreen Anjum Bhatti reads from her first collection of poetry ‘Neel Karayaan Neelkan’.
The aware Punjabi writers and artists have described the story as ‘yellow journalism’, ‘tabloid literature’, and, of course, ‘gutter literature’.
The text proceeds to carry out ‘character assassination of progressive Punjabi writers such as Nasreen Anjum Bhatti, Shaista Habib, Zubair Rana and Fauzia Rafique’, and it does so in a misogynistic, homophobic and degrading manner. The story is penned by Nain Sukh aka Khalid Mahmood in his book called ‘ayi buray de wa’. The so-called story is a collection of inaccuracies where there are as much as FIVE factual mistakes in FOUR lines of text- about one of the writers attacked who, incidentally, is still alive to point them out.
Uddari fully supports Naeem Sadhu, Lahore’s Feminist Collective, and other individuals and organizations that are getting together to stop this attempt to legitimize yellow journalism as literature, and to resist this onslaught of conservative patriarchal mindset that demeans and degrades women, lesbians, gay men and religious minorities.
Down with the erstwhile ‘friends’ who are promoting and supporting this abusive and filthy text, and who are insisting that it should be accepted as Punjabi literature.
Poet Mazhar Tirmazi is visiting Canada to stage his acclaimed Punjabi play on 1947 partition of India at the University of Fraser Valley (UFV). The event is scheduled for this Sunday, October 8 from 2-3:30pm, as part of the UFV College of Arts Postcolonial Theatre Festival.
Mazhar Tirmazi will also present his poems at a reading on October 5th, 3-6pm, with local poets.
For information, contact: Prabhjot Parmar
Associate Professor, Department of English
University of the Fraser Valley
33844 King Road
Abbotsford BC V2S 7M8
Tel: 604-504-7441 x 4472
Email: Prabhjot.Parmar@ufv.ca
I clear my goddamn throat
with organic, saffron-shaded, Sufi Ghuti-
its superfood ingredients hand picked
from indigenous, stolen territories
by migrant workers and undocumented laborers,
patiently turning their ethanol-dusky sweat
into plastic-protected fruits I peel labels off from
– a brew of California apples, BC berries
reddened, like desire, with local beets-
which I lick as a concoction to give my
goddamn chest a birth-inducing thrust
to say “ALLAH!”,
as I gurgle out the news of a
“bomb nearly as nuclear as a bomb can be”
-thrown acid-facedly on Afghani soil-
into a pale sink turning blight and spongy
like my own mindless mind.
Some native informant,
I contemplate,
capture the scene of this acid faced-ness
-Phallic Pentagon: the imperial center
of rape, and rupture-
and make an award winning documentary,
so I could applaud
with all my limbs in limbo,
like a freak unleashed.
Every night, as a narcotic balm,
I turn to my Sufi Ghuti
– licking it-
to assuage my guilt of seeing too much suffering
with a tradition
set aside for balancing the worse with the good
-a tradition that a few good men
(residing in an hypoxic,
upper class intellectual wardrobe)
curated to get past the thorny delirium
that organizing and agitating,
and losing one’s mind happens to be-
because the oppressor ambushes from
“both sides now”, as Joni Mitchell sings.
Adrift on a low sail and high moon,
I soften the edge of the Ideological
with the narcotic mirth of my Sufi Ghuti,
and whirl into misty obscurantism
-the throttled misery of a child in echolalia-
as I ponder if it’s Marx or Bakhsh,
that makes me more air-lifted?
To my lover,
I write: I will fight for the visa
regardless of the contradictions-
so dialectical it sounds that I,
feeling enough ghuti-ized,
hum my forlornness
into the lungs of the daylight.
But, the night descends, you know,
and, I get lonely.
It feels like the end of days, as Syrians tell us,
and frankly speaking,
the Promised Messiah isn’t coming to town this year either.
(April 14, 2017)
Sana Janjua is a poet, performer and playwright who is a Founding Member and the President of Surrey Muse. She works as a Registered Psychiatric Nurse, and enjoys working in the field of mental health.
..
Ustad Daman (né Chiragh Din) was born in Lahore in 1911. As a boy, he worked at his father’s tailoring shop while also attending school. Daman learned classical Punjabi poetry at home and was educated in Urdu. He also learned Persian and English including Shakespeare, Keats and Hardy.
Having participated in school poetry recitals, Daman began attending musha’ara in the parks, fairs and bazaars of Lahore as a teenager during the 1920s. The movement for India’s independence had already begun. In 1929, the Indian National Congress made its Declaration of Independence from Lahore. The city was also home to Marxist groups like the Kirti Kisan and anti-colonial and revolutionary groups like the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.
Daman recited his own revolutionary and anti-colonial poetry at the musha’ara. While attending one such gathering, Jawaharlal Nehru referred to Daman as the “Poet of Freedom.”
‘In China the Chinese are grand,
In Russia they do as they have planned.
In Japan its people rule over its strand.
The British rule the land of England,
The French hold the land of France,
In Tehran the Persians make their stand.
The Afghans hold on to their highland,
Turkmenistan’s freedom bears the Turkmen’s brand,
How very strange is indeed this fact,
That freedom in India is a contraband’
(Trans. F. Sharma)
Daman remained in Lahore upon the creation of Pakistan in 1947. The riots of the Partition had consumed his shop and library and he lost his wife and son to illness. His first act of political defiance came in 1958 when he made fun of Pakistan’s first military coup under Ayub Khan. Daman’s arrest however did little to temper his criticism of Pakistan’s military dictatorships and the corruption of its civilian governments in his poetry.
Daman wrote in Punjabi and the form, rhythm and metaphor of his poetry bears the influence of the classical and folk Punjabi tradition. If he could be sober and thoughtful in writing on the Partition, he could also adopt a more comic and satirical note in criticizing General Zia. He maintained a friendship with poets like Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib, but lived unassumingly in an old apartment in the precinct of the Badshahi Mosque.
Daman died in 1984. His poetry was published after his death by his friends and followers. The room he lived in near the Badshahi Mosque has since become an academy in his name.
Selected Poems (Trans. F. Sharma)
We may not say it but know it well
You lost your way. We too.
Partition has destroyed us friends.
You too, and us.
The wakeful have quite plundered us.
You slept the while, and we.
Into the jaws of death alive
You were flung. We too.
Life still may stir in us again:
You are stunned yet, and we.
The redness of the eyes betrays
You too have wept, and we.
–
What a house, this Pakistan!
Above live saints, down thieves have their run
A new order has come into force
Up above twenty families, below the hundred million.
Other people conquered mountains,
We live under the divisions heavy ton.
Other people may have conquered the moon.
But in a yawning precipice a place we’ve won.
I ran and ran and was aching all over,
I looked back and saw the donkey resting under the banyan.
–
Two gods hold my country in their sway
Martial law and La Illaha have here their heyday.
That one rules there over in the heavens
Down here this one’s writ runs.
His name is Allah Esquire.
This one is called Zia, the light of truth in full array.
Hurrah, General Zia, hip hip hooray,
Whoever can make you go away.
Ecstacy does my land surround
All around the Army is to be found.
Hundreds of thousands were surrendered as POWs.
Half of the land was bartered away in the fray.
Hurrah, General Zia, hip hip hooray,
Whoever can make you go away.
On TV you give recitations from Quran
With fables and traditions you go on and on.
Here we are engulfed in a brouhaha
While up there you are still there, my Allah
A pretender has staked his claim today
Hurrah, General Zia, hip hip hooray, Whoever can make you go away.
–
Thankful are some if they can chop wood
The others, on them, their orders bestow.
Why have the people lost their mind?
For every one the Almighty has a loving glow.
People are the real masters of this world
Orders do not from the handle of a sword flow.
The ones, Daman, who have forsaken God,
Those Nimruds are laid low at the very first blow.
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